The Look of the Thing

I suppose I could best be described as a wargaming navel gazer. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about gaming stuff and how best to realise my ideas on the table top. My thought processes range far and wide across most of recorded history and touches down occasionally on whatever shiny period happens to take my fancy. It is funny really, that after all this time I should have learned a thing or two but no, my goldfish like attention span still kicks in with monotonous regularity. The tipping for all this over thinking usually occurs with a question I know the answer to but have to keep reminding myself of it all the same. It is what periods do I enjoy reading about and gaming.

For me the difficulty has always been the sheer variety of material available for pretty much anything imaginable conflict wise. I am as susceptible as the next man to the 'ooh shiny' syndrome - the new ranges of figures or rules or - as is usually the case for me - when a new and impressive looking book comes out. Books are definitely a weakness of mine and a glossy new title is guaranteed to get me reaching for a figure catalogue and seeing what rules would best suit the period in question.

I have gone through more rationalisations of my collection over the years than I care to recall but have usually failed to keep to the best of intentions. This time though I have wised up to the fact that my time and resources are finite and that I really need to concentrate on less in order to get more done. Simple really when you think about.

The look of thing of course means using figures or models. In an ideal world I would field armies of exquisitely painted figures marching valiantly across and 8ft by 5ft table  that would live in specially built glass cabinets when not being used - unlihely to happen unless a handy lottery win turns up! I have been pondering the whole figure size issue and am seriously thinking that in order to achieve the quantity I want (I do prefer units that look like units - perhaps a couple of dozen foot figures or a dozen mounted) in the time I have then the smaller scales would tend to be a better option. I had flirted with 10/12mm but am now looking at even smaller figures - 6mm. These of course have the advantage of being easy to paint - I have painted many of these back in the 1980s - and are cheap. Using my preferred 4 bases to an infantry unit (I am talking from a hexed Command and Colours perspective) I reckon that 6 or 8 figures per base (meaning 24 or 32 figures to a unit) would make a respectable looking formation thereby satisfying the massed visual aspect of my gaming. It is certainly something to think about - and I am doing just that.